


A Visit To New York

by Carline



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternative Lifestyles, Elio's POV, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Gay Sex, Italy, M/M, New York, Poetry, Post-Book(s), Roma | Rome, Sex, United States
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 09:14:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 16,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13384722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carline/pseuds/Carline
Summary: In this story, Elio visits Oliver in New York, after hearing his wife has passed away from a heart attack."At Christmas, I longed - no, ached - to hear his voice and for seven straight days I would make sure I was in earshot of the phone when it wasn’t nighttime in New York or nighttime in Italy, as I was terrified of having to miss a second of his voice.Oh Oliver, I always wanted to be the one to answer the phone, just to chit chat for two minutes, and wish you Merry Christmas, all the while trying to find a voice in myself to beg you to visit us in Italy someday, I can’t live another year without seeing you, I can’t connect with anyone in the same way, I have not been myself, I don’t know what to do with this body. Can you come back to collect your name from my heart and bring it back to the States with you, throw it in the ocean like ash, so I don’t ever have to think of your name in combination with mine again?"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is written by me, Carline, and was first published on https://timotheetea.tumblr.com/. I want to thank Emily, Anis and Jamie for proofreading this story for me. 
> 
> I tried to keep the story true to André Aciman's novel, and can only hope that I did the story justice. If you enjoy it, please let me know, I'd really appreciate it. :)

_“I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again —”_  
_\- Georgia O’Keeffe, in a letter to Russel Vernon Hunter, from Georgia O’Keeffe: Art and Letters_

The first thing about New York that shook me was the air; stepping out of the airport I felt as though the air was thick with pollution from the airplanes, mixed with the rotten smell of trash cans. I was sick with anxiety: all throughout the 10-hour flight I was kicking myself thinking I should head back straight to Rome, I should get on the first plane back and pretend I never went in the first place. Of course, once on the ground, I didn’t have the courage to go back anymore.

Now, hailing a taxi, I was wondering if I would even have the courage to look him in the eye. How could I step foot inside his university building, knowing this was where he walked, this was where he breathed? Looking through the windows of the taxi, crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, New York seemed like it was at least hundred years ahead of time to Rome. It was, I had to admit, the most intimidating sight I ever encountered. The scale of it intimidated me more so than it excited me - and it made me feel terribly out of place.

I was wondering how it would change me to see Oliver again. How would I look at my own eyes after seeing his again? His eyes, the most beautiful blue, like turquoise, eyes you want to take to the sea.

I was endlessly jealous of the people who got to see him everyday, hear him speak, I was jealous of every stranger who got to see him from a distance and walk past him. I had spent years trying to forget him in every way possible. I would only speak of him whenever someone spoke of him, just like a war veteran would not speak of the war after it’s ended. Whenever Oliver’s name was brought up in our family home, I would brush it off quickly and shrug. I took new lovers over for Christmas, for when Oliver called, and he would always call, I would not be able to hide from myself. I would lie in bed with another lover, to keep my mind occupied after the dreaded call, so I wouldn’t have to dwell on the emotions.

As I slept with another in my bed, which was once his bed, I would repeat the call in my head over and over again. I would come remembering his voice.

If having sex wasn’t the way out, I tried drinking, amnesia, obsessing over everything I felt some sort of desire towards. I tried going without food, going without any alcohol for weeks, tried getting lost in terrible heart wrenching stories in books, which left my throat dry, heart hollow. The saying lontano dagli occhi lontano dal cuore: out of sight, out of mind hadn’t worked for me. I was replaying memories in my mind of Oliver on a daily basis.

I used to think I would be able to get over it - never forget it - but get over it. I had looked at other men before, and had felt a desire towards them, and I was sure I would love another just as I had craved Oliver that year. To think that at merely seventeen I would have found the person I wanted to spend a lifetime with, I deemed impossible. In any case, spending a life with a man, wasn’t the way I saw my life heading when I was seventeen. A sexual craving, sure - and deeply intense - but I never had thought that there wouldn’t be another to finish my sentences for me, to speak with my mouth, to understand what I was saying when I had fallen silent in a conversation.

Hearing his voice over the phone was like seeing a lifeline in front of you when you’re lost at sea, with mere seconds of breath left in you to keep from drowning. Oliver would always call my parents for Christmas, which was why I would always visit the duration of the holiday, as I was never sure which day he’d call. The Easter holidays, when he’d never call, I would never go back.

At Christmas, I longed - no, ached - to hear his voice and for seven straight days I would make sure I was in earshot of the phone when it wasn’t nighttime in New York or nighttime in Italy, as I was terrified of having to miss a second of his voice.

Oh Oliver, I always wanted to be the one to answer the phone, just to chit chat for two minutes, and wish you Merry Christmas, all the while trying to find a voice in myself to beg you to visit us in Italy someday, I can’t live another year without seeing you, I can’t connect with anyone in the same way, I have not been myself, I don’t know what to do with this body. Can you come back to collect your name from my heart and bring it back to the States with you, throw it in the ocean like ash, so I don’t ever have to think of your name in combination with mine again?

I had urged myself to get over it, even went as far as to read books on the topic of heartbreak - because I was too embarrassed to ask anyone, or speak of it - but the more stories I read, the more I realised that in trying to understand it, I was not doing myself a favor. I was watering the flowers - or the weeds, however you want to call it.

The strength to go after Oliver to New York was already years in the making before he called, I admitted to myself. Throughout these seven years there were few weeks I did not think of him. Rome was damned by his presence, to go to university there had been a mistake: whenever I missed him and wanted to find him, I would walk the exact same route we walked years before. In my parents’ home I could smell his clothes, but in Rome I could follow our younger selves like a shadow, and almost feel his presence as I was walking in his footsteps. In Rome, where we were so purely ourselves and in being ourselves, each other, I could not forget him. To be in Rome, was to be with him.

Which in hindsight, might have been why I went to study in Rome in the first place.

This, I had never told him. Better to fall silent than to mess up his married life, I thought. Better one person unable to move on, than two. Thus, our yearly call was never more than a 2-minute polite chit-chat in which I tried to impress him, and in turn, he did the same, whether he was consciously trying or not.

Something changed however. The call came just two weeks ago: a perfect June weekday lazing around the garden of my parents’ house with a new lover: soft skin, name chosen out of love by wealthy parents, a person beaming with light. I had just graduated university and was enjoying life without any responsibilities. Another summer, a few weeks away from my life in Rome, to escape the city and reconnect with nature, learn to breathe again, practice tennis, swim, spend time with my parents and family friends. Get bored, then try and find a job, that had been the plan.

I was lazily playing piano late one night when I heard the phone ring. As I was closest to the hallway, I was the one to pick up. We were often getting calls, and my mother especially loved to phone her foreign friends and smoke a cigarette while sitting cross legged on the chair in the hallway. I had a few glasses of wine during dinner drudgery and felt light-headed and tired: I was already annoyed with the person who had the decency to call at such a late hour! It must have been around twelve that night.

My heart started pounding heavily the second I recognised the voice on the other end. Oliver! My heart suddenly felt like a tornado in my chest, which was reaching for all the air in my body. Instantly I felt nervous and out of words: normally I had months to prepare for a conversation with him. The call threw me off completely.

His wife had passed away, he began after greeting me with my name. She was in the shower, had a sudden heart attack. He found her there, stark naked, the heat of the shower still fogging up the bathroom walls. He wondered what had taken her so long, still it took him 30 minutes to check up on her, he had been having breakfast with the boys downstairs. She was just 26 years old, a new mother.

My heart cried out for him. To hear his heart break as he told me the terrible news, was to break my own. The news was a tsunami: it cleared away all the houses, the electric wires, the trees: suddenly I felt I could see him clearly: not his apartment, but his face, the same expression he wore when we said goodbye - which was the saddest I had ever seen him look. It was the first time I heard him cry. It sounded terrible, ugly. It sounded like a million stars breaking.

It shattered me. I broke down inside. I slid down the wall on the floor, and grasped the wire as if begging it not to lose the connection. My new lover was in the living room watching a film with my family members, Mafalda, Anchise. I could hear the faint music of the television in the background, someone singing a jazz tune. He apologised for calling so late. Nonsense, I said.

”Elio,” he cried. ”Elio, I can’t raise my kids alone.” His voice cracked. ”Elio, how can I carry the responsibility alone? It’s too much,” his voice trailed off.

I could not find the right words, or any words at all. What was there to say? All I remember repeating was ”I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” My parents rushed into the hallway to see who was calling so late. They saw me on the ground, my eyes teared up. My mother sunk to her knees and put both her hands on my knees, as to comfort me. My father took the phone from me, and just like that the night had changed.

Hearing him say these words felt like he wasn’t saying them to me. It felt as though he was admitting to himself he couldn’t do it alone - he needed help. Maybe I was selfless, or selfish. I decided, in that moment, I had to go see him.

It was all I needed to book the plane ticket. I bought expensive chocolates at Fiumicino and wrote a condolences card in my economy class seat which my father had kindly paid for. Oliver, I thought, please greet me when you see me. I’ll leave whenever you need me to go. I won’t say a word if you don’t want me to.

Please take care of yourself, is all I ask of you.

I wanted to make sure he was okay, so I could be okay too.


	2. Chapter 2

_“I literally choke with the need to see you — it shakes me to the core.”_  
\- Simone de Beauvoir, from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre featured in Letters To Sartre  
  
The university building was new and modern, the exact opposite of the university I had attended in Rome. The building was enormous, as though they had taken their time with it. Whoever had designed it must have been the most boring man alive, I thought, for there were no decorations anywhere, just plain brick walls with the American flag beside the entrance. The building was so huge I couldn’t even guess how many students were enrolled in this university alone. It was nothing like the cramped university I had studied at. It reminded me of a factory: it had no charm and it was the most uninspiring thing I had ever laid eyes on.   
  
For a few minutes I stood outside smoking a cigarette trying to find the courage to walk in. When I threw away my cigarette, I immediately started biting my nails, in order to give myself just a few more minutes. I was so scared, I didn’t know what I was doing. It wasn’t my place to be here, I thought. I regretted coming, wanted to go straight back to the hotel. It was already four in the afternoon, there were students coming out of the building every minute. I was jet lagged and felt incredibly tired, though I had taken a long nap in the hotel that morning.

I had made up my mind that I would go today, so I would go today. 

I was wearing a colorblock jacket, which was all the rage in Rome, but not in New York, or so it seemed. I felt terribly out-of-place. A few students looked at me curiously as they walked by, raising their eyebrows at me. I must have stood out like a sore thumb.

I felt like a fool, and just as I was about to light another cigarette, a kind looking older lady came up to me from behind, and asked if I was here for the graduation ceremony. ”No, I’m not,” I answered hastily. Quickly followed by a: ”Thank you,” though she hadn’t offered to help. She smiled, nodded and walked towards the entrance, where she looked over her shoulder to look at me once more.

I had not moved an inch, and felt obliged to go in now that I had refused to ask the kind lady a question.

Inside I had no idea where to go and asked for his name at the reception. After a minute of going through a folder, the young receptionist came up with the directions to his office on the fourth floor. I thanked her and urged my heart to stop pounding in my ears. Jet lag did not do me any favors.

_Cazzo_ , I swore.  _Cazzo, cazzo, cazzo_. A nasty habit I picked up in university. Yet I walked the stairs, and through a long hallway. I had to force myself to walk, just as I had forced myself that I was going to come today. Just man up, I thought, don’t be such a pathetic child! This is what you want, I had to remind myself, though I was scared shitless.  

When I walked past a corner, I suddenly caught a glimpse of him, and immediately took two steps back so I was back around the corner. I hit my head with my fist, and then once more.  _Cazzo_! I could make out his voice, which sounded way different than through the telephone. Younger, somehow. It was a voice I remembered all too well, I had repeated it inside my head like a broken record. It was the voice in which I would often think in, as though it was another language I picked up, and had mastered it so well that it was now my first language: this voice was my own voice. It was in my head all the time. 

I could hear myself breathing heavily. I bit my lower lip until I could taste blood and grasped my neck as if to give myself the urge to find words again. Why, I thought, did I do such a stupid thing? Who was I to interfere in his life  _again_? Show up out of nowhere, just to say my condolences?

Who does that? Whoever would ever come such a way? Should have left it with the telephone call, I thought. Man up, Elio.

I debated going back again, but quickly diminished the thought. No, I had not come all this way for nothing. I would see him now, and deal with myself later. If need be, I could spend the rest of my days in New York under the covers. No one would ever notice, and no one would mind.  
  
Letting go of my neck, I walked around the corner a second time.

He was talking to a female student my age. He looked rough: he had grown a small beard and his hair colour was darker than I remembered. Instead of standing up straight, he was talking to her with his head bent. I noticed he was wearing a suit with creases in them. I felt my heart reaching out for him immediately. The moment I saw him I felt like he needed an embrace to last a lifetime - for he looked so broken and devastated, I felt like if anyone so much as gave him a light tap on the back, he would fall to the floor to collapse.

He noticed me the second the student said her goodbyes and walked away. Two seconds it took, in which he looked both confused and shocked, then he smiled gently and said my name softly. I felt my knees going weak at the sound of it.   
  
A quick hug, like I was a graduate student thanking a professor for his help. I could taste blood on my lip, cursed myself, and smeared it on the back of my hand instead. Control yourself, I swore.

”I’m so sorry, I don’t know what got into me. I had to come see you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for your loss. Mi dispiace tanto,” I blurted while hugging him. I kept my voice silent, as I was afraid anyone would hear me, though we were the only ones standing in the hallway. I needed to get the words out, to show him I was here to offer my condolences, and not for myself. Heal yourself before you heal others, they say - I was trying to do both at the same time.

He smelled nothing like I remembered: he was smoking a new brand of cigarettes, I could smell it on his shirt. I could feel his ribs hugging him.  _Porca vacca_! He had gotten thinner. ”Elio! What are you doing here - ?” He eyed me questionably.

The words hung in the air. I couldn’t bare to look him in the eye, so I stared at my feet instead. I remembered a look I shared with my father before I left. The look said: I understand, I love you if you go see him. I love you when you return. In my parents’ eyes, I could do no wrong - they must have always taken my silence on the topic of Oliver as a sign that I could not talk about it, that the feelings never went away. If anyone ever spoke of him, like all the people that had met him, I would always repeat what I had said to my father: “Oh yes, he was very kind and intelligent. Of course we miss him very much.” People quickly learned to drop the manner, for there was too much to say, but none of it they would ever hear from me - it was not something I wanted to discuss. Hearing people say kind things about him made me furious at first, but quickly deepened into a feeling of grief. When people asked about him, I felt like I was taken to a graveyard, and I had to stare at his grave stone and speak of him. It was unbearable - I couldn’t do it. I was scared I’d cry having to speak of the emptiness he left in the house, in every summer, every Christmas, in my heart.   
  
He had taken a chunk out of me with him when he left - and whenever anyone asked about him, it felt as though they were bothering me about him. As though they were saying: ‘Where has that part of you gone, that completed you, that made you?’ As though they were asking me who had taken the blood from my veins, how come I had turned so cold, why my nails were blue. Even Mafalda started urging me to smile more whenever I visited, which both angered and annoyed me endlessly. That and her scalding me on not eating the huge amounts of food she made, made me sick just thinking about the happiness of the summer when I was seventeen.   
  
The heart wants what it wants. My parents never tried to downplay the heartbreak, which I was grateful for. They never tried to give me a speech on how to get over it, which I was grateful for too. We never even spoke the word ‘heartbreak’ for it did not do it justice - a ‘break’ is when you break an arm, or when you take a leave off work - something you were able to get over eventually. Seven years of it, and I still wasn’t able to piece it together again, to fix the parts that are broken. 

Looking at Oliver now, I recognised what had made me fall in love with him all over again. Though his face was pale - did he never go out in the sun? - and he looked older, I was almost pleased to notice I still desired to touch him, standing in front of him. I wanted to reach out and touch his chest, his arms, I wanted to kiss the soles of his feet and lay with my own body against his for hours, until we weren’t sure where the warmth of our bodies came from - mine or his. Most of all, I wanted to feel his hand in mine, the way only lovers hold hands. I wanted to hand him my body, just to see what he would do with it.   
  
”I had to see you. I hoped I could find you here,” I said after we both had fallen silent for a second.

He put his hand on my left shoulder blade, just like he had touched the student just seconds before. My body shivered at the gentle gesture.  _Cazzo_ , I cursed again, feeling my body respond to his, as easily as a person breathes. Being touched by him was like learning to speak for the first time.   
  
”Let’s talk in my office,” he suggested, smiling, and led the way to the door.

Once again I tried to smear away the blood from my lower lip, which was still bleeding. Damn the body, I thought. And damn the mind. 


	3. Chapter 3

_“I barely knew I had skin before I met you.”  
\- Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests  
  
_There were so many books on his bookshelves, that Oliver had double stacked some, so much so that there were quite a couple book covers sticking out of the shelves. There were two large houseplants, and pictures on his desk of two young boys: about four and two years old, in the garden, and another one in front of a Christmas tree. They looked so beautiful, pure, innocent, with Oliver’s blue eyes. It was like seeing Oliver’s heart.   
  
There was one picture of him and his wife: she too, was beautiful. Her hair was blonde, her eyes green, hair wavy. She looked just the part, the wife of  _el muvi star_. What struck me most was her laugh: her teeth were so white, so American-ly white, straight from a toothpaste commercial. The freckles on her cheeks and nose made her seem younger than 26. She looked like she could host a tv program; she looked like the most American woman in the world. In the picture Oliver was tanned, and kissing her head with closed eyes. It made me feel unbelievably insignificant in his life.    
  
It also made me jealous to the core to see him with another. She looked so beautiful, she too, like Oliver, looked like she could light up a whole room with her presence. Just that white smile alone would do it! To see a picture of the two of them made me feel as though the marriage had been was more real than I ever pictured, now that I knew what his wife had looked like. I felt foolish for coming once again - I could never come close to comprehending what Oliver had been through with her, and how the loss had affected him. She was the mother of his children! Those poor boys would grow up with barely any memories of her, if any at all. It made me incredibly sad for them. Life was unfair - these boys deserved nothing but the best the world had to offer.  
  
Oliver had sunk into his chair. The pile of folders on his desk was overflowing and the telephone on his desk had a red flickering light. The ashtray hadn’t been emptied in a while: there must have been at least 30 cigarette stumps in the ashtray. It reminded me of myself, my own apartment. Looking at him now, I felt I could understand him better: a young father, trying to make ends meet, dealing with an unexpected loss. I would have broken down, certainly would have taken a long leave off work, if it had been me.  
  
He had caught me staring at the ashtray. ”This is only my second day back,” he muttered. I could feel his eyes on me, taking me in. In order to find a use for my hands, I walked over to his window to look out over the street for a second. My hands on the window still, I exclaimed: ”I had to see you,” without looking at him.  
  
I was repeating myself, but I couldn’t help it. The last two weeks I had rehearsed what I would say to him, but everything seemed too meaningless. Did I come to comfort him, or did I come to comfort myself? I felt terribly ashamed of myself - how could I be selfish for one second? How could I ever compare what I had been going through, to his loss? I felt terrible to feel I still desired to touch him. I wanted to hold him, kiss him while he cried, care for him, nurse him. I wanted him to choose me to break down to, for I wasn’t convinced if anyone would hold him enough, with as much care as I’d hold him.   
  
Arrogantly, I thought: if I was to lose a family member, he would be the first person I would think of to call. I would share the news with him first. Telling anyone else first seemed too strange. Was I wrong to think this is why he had called us to let us know, just a day after she’d passed? That we had remained important people in his life?   
  
When he had called, and I had answered, did I hear a sign of relief when I heard him sigh my name? Thousand miles of wires, I could have easily been mistaken, maybe it was the sound of the television, or of the wind on the windows. Most likely I wasn’t thinking straight at all. Was he glad that I picked up, and not my father or my mother? Who had he called before calling us?  
  
“Elio.” Oliver had gotten up from his chair and had walked up to me. He put his arm around my shoulder and I turned around to hug him. I pressed my face in his chest, to smell the new Oliver again, to feel his heartbeat through his shirt. Through his shirt I felt his necklace of the Star of David, which surprised me. I was wearing mine, too, still, after all these years. Hugging him made me want to sink to my knees and beg him never to let go of my body.   
  
I started apologising again.    
  
He lifted up my chin with his hand and pressed his forehead against mine. He sighed my name and I could feel how weak his embrace was. Our lips were so close: the tips of our noses were already touching. I was the one to hold him tightly: I could not bear to have any distance in the embrace. I wanted him to feel my body, and I wanted to feel his body warmth against mine, telling myself out loud: “You are still here.”

“You are still here,” he repeated back in a whisper. It sounded like we were two wounded soldiers returning from war, falling into the arms of their mother. We were both the mother and the soldier. I didn’t know whether he or I was more the soldier, whether any limbs were broken, or how many limbs. Whether we could walk again, whether we could sleep or dream again. I didn’t know how many nights we suffered in the trenches, why we were there, who the enemy was. I didn’t know if we could find enough hope to end the war ourselves. How we could ever speak of the horrible sights we had seen.  
  
The embrace lasted no more than five seconds, yet it reassured me somehow that he was glad I had come to see him, and I lost all uncertainty about my visit. I would have paid ten times the price of the flight ticket just for this moment: to have him against me, telling me I’m here, this was real. I felt my whole body caving in, telling itself: this is what you craved all this time, this was where the oxygen was. You can breathe now, just try it: breathe in through your nose, feel the oxygen entering your upper chest, breathe out through the mouth. Do it again - this is how you live. This is how alive you are.   
  
Embracing him felt like this was the only goal I had in life to fulfill. Instead of his lips, I kissed his left eye, then his right. I wish I had two mouths to kiss both eyes simultaneously, so if he cried, his tears would instantly be my tears as well.


	4. Chapter 4

_“Nothing teaches me not to miss you.”_  
\- Anton Chekhov, from Complete Works  
  
Back at my hotel in the East Village I cried as soon as I closed the door behind me. Without bothering to shut the curtains, I stripped down of my clothes, and got naked into the bed, which had been made up by the housekeepers while I was gone. The daylight was maddening, beating off the white walls, and I got under the covers to hide the sunlight from hitting my eyes. My bottle of water was still on the nightstand, my watch and a novel I had read yesterday evening, were too.  
  
I tried to close my eyes, and force sleep to come, but my body was too tense. I urged my body to calm down, but it did not seem to be able to. I felt like my body had doubled its veins, and my blood was flowing for the first time in years. I listened to my heartbeat, and tried to place the unfamiliar feelings in my brain. I replayed the conversation in my head.  
  
“No, I can’t possibly go back to your house to have dinner now.”   
  
His parents had flown over from New England for a few days to babysit the boys and help out. His mother would cook.  
  
“Why not?”   
“Non posso. I can’t.”   
  
He understood. He looked triste, sad. I touched his little finger, linked mine in his. We both looked at our fingers in each other: not yet holding, but touching, reaching out. I quickly let go when I heard voices coming in the hallway. He took a step back.   
  
“Let’s have dinner tomorrow then.”   
  
It wasn’t a question. I would never have said no. This was what I came here for. I hoped by tomorrow I could look him in the eyes. I hoped I could hold him longer. I wished not to speak, but to give my body to his, to give my voice to his, to give my heart to his. I wanted him to have everything that I had. I wanted to help him in any way I could, but I wasn’t sure whether he wanted anything I could give him, whether I wasn’t a burden to him.   
  
Have everything of me as you want, Oliver. Take whatever you want to take. Don’t say I didn’t offer you everything I have.   
  
“I have a gift for you.” I had taken out the chocolates and the condolences card, which seemed irrelevant now, and it had made me embarrassed and shy.   
  
“Thank you,” he said. He read the card and managed to smile. He looked like he was ready to cry. ”Your parents have already sent flowers over - they are too kind. Will you thank them for me?”  
  
“I will. I’ll call.” I hesitated to ask the next question, played with the words in my mouth before deciding to free them. ”Are you glad that I came?”   
  
He smiled for a second, but never gave a straight answer. As a matter of goodbye, I kissed him on the hand - he did not kiss mine back.   
  
“Let’s talk tomorrow. I want to know everything,” I said before leaving.   
  
On the telephone, a while later, I said: “Mama, papa, the state he is in! I have never known he could look this heartbroken. It makes me sad knowing the grief he is going through. How he is working again so soon, I don’t know and don’t understand. Tomorrow we’ll have dinner at the hotel and we’ll talk more.”   
  
In the evening I went for a walk around the neighbourhood. Instead of taking in the route I was walking so as not to get lost, I decided I would walk north and see where I’d end up - I could always take a taxi back. The noises were so loud, the day’s heat didn’t seem to fade, the streets were so busy around dinner time. The pace of life was so fast, how different than Rome, where everyone was finding cover in the shadows! In Rome, everyone lazes around the squares and the cafés, smoking and chatting away in the Romanesco dialect. Here, it seemed as though everyone was rushing to go home - not paying attention to their surroundings.  
  
I saw an older lady just about to sit down on a bench, when suddenly a young man hurriedly sat down on the same spot. How rude! Such thing would never happen in Italy! I shook my head at the sight of it.  

I sat down in a small pizza shop to have two slices of pepperoni pizza, which were so greasy that I felt nauseous afterwards. The heat was so different than I was used to: I was sweating, even though I was wearing a loose shirt. Inside the pizza shop the smell was even worse than out on the streets - where did one go to get a breath of fresh air around here?   
  
While I was walking I thought of Oliver, his apartment, his children, his parents, but most of all his wife. Oliver, now a widower. It baffled me the more I thought about it. His hollow cheeks, his study that reeked of cigarettes, his ribs, his sorrowful eyes. His arms that used to be muscular had now seemed thinner. He seemed to have aged evidently - somehow, having never seen any pictures, I had found it hard to picture what he would look like getting older. Though he was still, without question, incredibly handsome, it seemed like he had lost his carefree way of living. Thinking back of Oliver in B. jumping over the fence towards the sea instead of opening it like everyone else did, was in sharp contrast with the Oliver I had witnessed today. He’d lost his youth, which made me reminiscence back to the days, those beautiful days, in Rome. If I ever walked in his footsteps again, I would be able to picture him, the real him, not the Oliver I kept in my thoughts all day, as I had seen him today.   
  
How seeing Oliver had changed me, I couldn’t understand yet. I just needed to see him again, speak to him again. I craved to be near him. The second I shut the door of his office behind me, I wanted to go back in immediately, and tell him I didn’t ever want to leave his side.   
  
Why had he never come back? He’d promised to visit! Other summer residents came and went all too often - where was Oliver? Why hadn’t he come?    
  
Was he glad to see me? Had he faked his response? Could I help him in a way that other people could not help him? Surely he must have many friends whom he could lean on for support. He’d mentioned going on holiday with friends before, there always seemed to be something going on with friends when he called on Christmas.  
  
He is shy, my father used to say. Still, coming back for a Christmas holiday was something most of our summer guests did, even if it was only for a day to see the old professor and his family that gave them the summer to never forget.

Why hadn’t he? Every year he would call, but he would never mention a visit, and we daren’t ask him to come, though my parents did mention it - they never asked. I didn’t dare ask him to come. It would’ve been better too, if he hadn’t come, so I could resume to try and forget him, while trying to attach myself to other people.   
  
My father saw the coming and going of lovers in my life as a coping mechanism, I was sure. He was too polite to ever comment on it - not meaning to offend any of the lovers I introduced him to.   
  
Which suited him. With every passing year, it seemed evident to me that he must know how I was longing for Oliver. I kept the show going, every time a new lover, vastly different from the one before. Discovering time and time again that I could not find it in myself to truly feel affection towards any of them. They bored me, annoyed me, and I was too restless to stick around. They never completed me - like Oliver had been an extension of myself.  
  
Going down memory lane on the Rome route of Oliver & Elio’s drunken night in 1987, I cursed myself, but could not keep myself from walking in his footsteps at least once a month, for all those years. Headphones on, listening to various composers until the batteries died. In our spot I would sit down on the pavement against the wall, and close my eyes, and feel everything just as vividly as the day it happened.   
  
Now, things would always be different. Oliver had changed. In turn, I realised, I needed to adjust to him again. 


	5. Chapter 5

_“If someday the moon calls you by your name don’t be surprised,_ _  
_ _Because every night I tell her about you.”_ _  
_ __\- Shahrazad al-Khalij  
  
I noticed my hands were shaking when I saw him arrive. Even though I had gotten out of the shower just 30 minutes ago, I felt myself sweating again. The hotel’s restaurant was a large open space, filled with the same cheap black tables and red chairs. The candles on the tables did not have a candle stand, as if no one had bothered to buy them.   
  
The whole place looked sad and uncharming - I wished I had not agreed to meet here. I should have let him choose a restaurant, I thought, and was embarrassed of the atmosphere of the place, and how much I identified with it. Sad, uncharming and forgotten. The candle on my table, already half burned, was bothering me more than it should.   
  
When I saw him enter the restaurant, he was wearing a similar shirt to the day before, though he had shaved his beard and he looked a little better, perhaps because he was wearing a slight smile walking towards me. He was carrying a leather messenger bag - he had just gotten out of university, I was sure. He looked a little rushed to get over to the table. I was instantly nervous to see him again. I could feel my heart in my mouth.   
  
He greeted me with a quick hug. ”I apologise for being late,” he announced while he sat down. It felt strange to see him like this, to sit across from him. The setting made me even more nervous: it urged people to look the other in the eye, which I, evidently, was not very good at.   
  
”You’re not late,” I replied and waved his apology away, though he had been late. I acted as though waiting those ten minutes was nothing to me - I was used to waiting much longer - but still I had been staring at the clock on the wall without blinking until my eyes felt dry.   
  
Looking at him now, he seemed even more restless than the day before. He didn’t know where to place his hands, first tried folding his arms on the table, then proceeding to fold them in his lap. How unlike him, I thought. I had never seen him like this. Oliver, nervous, to see me? Was he sweating too? He did not look me in the eye now, though he was staring at me just yesterday.   
  
”I am happy to see you here, though you didn’t have to come all this way to check up on me,” he grinned slightly and eyed me quickly. I averted my eyes again - thinking I should have been fine with meeting him yesterday, instead of stealing another evening of him, away from his boys. I was an intruder, an outsider. He probably hadn’t wanted to come, he probably needed to get back home, where he should be. I was a hassle to deal with, I knew it, he knew it - he was too kind to not meet me, now that I had come all this way to see him. I did not deserve two meetings, I thought.   
  
The waitress arrived and Oliver ordered black coffee, I ordered another one too, though I had not liked the taste of the first one. So far, all the food I had tasted while in New York was too salty, the coffee too bland.

I felt uncomfortable, and too nervous to ask him anything, and I wondered what he thought of me. I was shifting in my seat in order to do something. In my eyes, my appearance had barely changed. My hair was slightly longer and I had gained some weight, but I was still too skinny for my liking, not muscular enough. I knew my own stomach was too flat, and the hair on my chest was a joke. My jawline seemed to only have gotten sharper over the years, which displeased all the women in my family greatly. I wondered what he thought of me and if he was dissatisfied with the sight of me. 

I wanted to say to him: I wanted to come. But to use such a verb as ’want’ didn’t seem to qualify.

Noticing my inability to speak, he said: ”Tell me about you.”

So I did. I told him about Sapienza University of Rome, the courses, the books we’d read: Calvino, D'Annunzio, Manzoni, many of the books my family already owned, many of the books I had already read, but only had to re-read to freshen up my memory. Growing up a professor’s son gave me a huge advantage, as I was used to discussing books from an early age. Writing essays wasn’t as challenging as I thought it would be, I joked. 

He, he later admitted, knew all these things already, as he’d been corresponding with my father throughout the years, which my father had kept from me all this time. Still, he let me talk about myself, which flattered him.

Talking about myself also gave me a chance to form my own questions for Oliver in my head, and to start of the conversation on a light tone.

”You still talk fast,” he noted. I brushed it off with a wave. ”Tell me about you,” I urged instead.

His eyes averted to the windows of the restaurant. Instead of answering the question, he said: ”Let’s go outside for a smoke. Do you still smoke?”

He was just being polite, he would’ve smelled the nicotine on me. His hands looked as pale as his face. His body must be paler too. He looked more American than he’d ever done - though in the restaurant, he seemed to fit right in with all the other guests.   
  
I had to admit to myself, that the moment I laid eyes on him again, that I wanted him naked, wanted to undress him as fast as possible, taste his cock again to see if he smelled different. I wanted his cock in my mouth, to feel useful, to be desired, and to desire him as I’d done those years ago. And if he smelled any different, taste and lick him until the scent would be on my body, too.

After I had smelled, and tasted his skin, I wished to feel every inch of his body again. I would start with the sole of his feet, move up to the inside of his knees, his hips, I would lick his armpits, his ears, the years he was carrying on his face. I wanted through his eyes to see myself again. How long had it been since I had talked to myself, kissed myself, through someone else? Years. It had been seven years. 

After I paid for the bill - ”You don’t have to, let me pay” - and we had stood up, I asked him why he’d never come to visit.

Again, he did not answer my question. How frustrating, to try and understand him, and him not giving anything away!  _Later_ , spoke his eyes. I was wondering if there would be a  _later_  after this evening - I had not dared to think of any evenings after this one. Would he want to see me again?


	6. Chapter 6

_“I don’t know what to say to you except that it tore the heart out of my body saying goodbye to you.”_  
 _\- Vita Sackville-West, from a letter to Virginia Woolf_   
  
There was a small park just a block away, which we decided to pay a visit. It must have been around eight, there were some older children playing on the swings. A few pigeons were searching for food in the trash cans. The sun was still shining, although not as bright anymore, still: my skin welcomed the sun with pleasure. 

As all the park benches in the park were taken, we decided to sit on a low concrete wall, separating the park from the street. He laid his leather messenger bag under his feet carefully. He was able to touch the ground with his feet: I was not. It made me feel like a child. I was nervously swinging my feet away from the wall and against the wall, as I had no idea what to do with myself. I felt like a teenager who had just discovered that his body was changing, and did not know what to do with the changes. Somehow, still, I felt like I didn’t have my body under control. 

He lit a cigarette, passed it on to me and lit a second one, for himself. The small gesture killed me - it was the first thing he had given me this visit. How ironic, that giving me a smoke was both a way to die sooner and de-stress. It could be out of love, or it could be out of hatred. The fact that he had this cigarette in his mouth before passing it on to me, gave me shivers. Was he giving me his lips?  
  
A mother walking by with her daughter, shot us a glance after looking at the cigarettes. I rolled my eyes at her. Who was she to judge? If only she knew how I’d die for cigarettes that had touched his lips - I would never stop smoking them. 

As I felt too awkward, I swung my left leg over the wall, so I was now front facing him. I wanted to reach out and touch his leg, but I couldn’t, there were too many people around, and he would surely slam away my hand if I touched him. I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to touch him, even after yesterday. He could’ve changed his mind since yesterday, and I was too afraid to do anything that would make him leave.   
  
Was he thinking of his own kids? Were his parents still watching them? What would he normally do on a Thursday evening like this? What had he done these past years? Where had he been? Who had he slept with?   
  
I looked at him and could not imagine him without sex: the sex appeal bounced off of him, it was glowing, he radiated sex. I wondered when he had last slept with someone. I wondered how he coped with sleeping with someone for years, until one day the bed is empty, the weight is gone, the warmth is gone and there’s no one breathing next to you. How did he sleep at night?

I thought of the girl I was seeing, and our usual Thursday evenings playing cards with friends in their cramped dining room in Rome. She would wear loose dresses and flaunt too much of her skin, she would kiss me in front of everyone and talk openly about our sex life - which both repelled and fascinated me about her. We could not seem to deal with each other, nor fight the urge to have sex again. It was toxic, but then again I did not know whether my relationships had ever been truly healthy. Could you be in a healthy relationship if you were longing for another body?

”Do you remember  _that_  time on the rocks?” Oliver asked, taking a drag and turning to see my reaction. I wanted to kiss those lips so bad. I wanted to reach out and touch them, feel the curve of them, lick them and caress them. He was, to me in that moment, the most beautiful man alive. 

Of course, I remembered  _that_  time on the rocks. Conversation moved to Vimini, and how we had spread her ashes out over the Mediterranean sea. He’d want the same, he said. Don’t talk about dying, I said.

There was such comfort in talking about stuff we had already talked about, to avoid talking about the things that mattered! In talking about these things, I felt like we were barely getting any closer, we were just talking to hear ourselves talk. It was another way for him to avoid talking about his wife, and to avoid talking about us - if that was anything to discuss. Would I survive if this would be everything we did: dwelling on old memories, polite conversation, him saying he can’t stay and had to go home?   
  
How could I ever let him go home? Home, what a concept! Home is where the heart is, the saying goes. Home is where another calls you by his name, I thought. 

Did I crave to be rejected by him again? Was the rejection of him not coming to stay with us not enough for me? I was clinging onto nothing, I realised. He must have realised too, that he had to reject me again. That one rejection was not enough for me. Here he is again, he must have thought, here he is again begging, while there’s nothing to beg for. What do you say to someone you have to reject again? 

This was how it had to end: he would leave, admitting he still couldn’t do anything with me,  _to me_ , and he’d ask me not to visit him again. He would know I still wanted him, and carry my want with him wherever he went, and he would not act upon it. He’d know I want him, going to bed at night. He’d make love to someone else, knowing I wanted it to be me. And he wouldn’t act upon it - he’d shrug his shoulders, think: what a child, to come back a second time.

I thought of tomorrow, and pictured myself sobbing in the hotel room in broad daylight, empty handed, empty hearted. I would have to go home with loss. Loss of dignity, loss of pride. I had lost to Oliver: shown him I wanted him, and had not stopped wanting him since I was seventeen. I had given up. This was me waving the white flag. 

He had been scanning my face and coughed softly, so I returned my attention to him. He smiled when he had my attention again. 

He must be wondering: what do you want? You know I can’t give you what you want. I’m better off without you. I have kids, Elio. I just lost my wife - I will have to marry another woman. I can’t do this to you, nor myself. Please go home. 

You’ll kill me if you start again.

He did not say these things, but he might as well have. ”I’m sorry I came,” I repeated again, to fill the air, for this was all I could come up with, this was all I could bear to say. This was how I told him I could live without him, sure, but I would be a shell of a being: I’d die if he died.

”Don’t be stupid.” He shook his head and looked at me, then he took another drag. ”I wanted you to come.”  
  
It was the most honest thing he had said so far. 

It took me off guard.  _Cazzo_ , I thought.  _Cazzo, cazzo, cazzo_.


	7. Chapter 7

_“I am worn out with dreams;”_  
 _\- William Butler Yeats, from “Men Improve with the Years,” in The Wild Swans at Coole_  
  
He made a quick call home, ”the boys are sound asleep, I have some time” and we walked a few minutes to a restaurant he knew, which was very good, he said. And indeed, the food was very good.   
  
I was struggling to understand what ’some time’ meant in New York. In Rome ’some time’ was hours, till whenever you felt like leaving, whatever you felt like doing. For the streets would wait, sleep would wait and youth wouldn’t. ’Some time’ in Rome meant there was room to go out until the early hours, or listen to music on the balcony and talk books, and if you somehow fell asleep on another person’s armchair, or bed, there was nothing to worry about. Because there was time, there was room, and you were welcome to stay.

’Some time’ in New York, maybe it was an hour, or two? It messed me up knowing he could say his goodbyes any second! I was preparing to say goodbye to him in my head: my condolences again, visit us in Rome sometime, if you’d like, keep in touch. Take care. Please call more often, I come hearing your voice. Do not say please, do not beg. 

Is this your life, Oliver? I wondered, sitting across from him at the restaurant. Seeing him in such a setting felt so strange. In just a few hours - one, two? - I would start to forget the details. I noticed he was scratching the hair on his forearms. I was pressing my nails in my hands under the table. We were both shy. Two why people struggling to come to terms with a new situation: both of us without a serious relationship, in the same room, across the table from one another. 

I remember a time when we could not sit at a table without our feet touching! Now I struggled to find the courage to speak and look him in the eye.

How was the food? He asked. It was good. The entrecote is to die for, I never had a better one in my life. I’m glad you enjoy it. Would you like more wine? Yes, I would.   
  
Superficial conversation, how we were ignoring the elephant in the room! I felt like it was staring straight at us, and did not move until we stared back at it. 

I kicked myself, knowing I had to speak, knowing he would be gone soon, slip through my fingers like sand again. Seeing him felt like I had forgotten what the sun on my skin felt like. I knew, in my heart, this was the most important day of the year, surely of the last few years! I had to capture every moment of his, remember the tone of his voice, so I could never forget them. I would nurture his words at night, sleep with them, shower with them, masturbate to the sight of him.

How long would it last? How long is it acceptable to survive on memories? A lifetime?  
  
How to be in the moment so completely you don’t forget a second of it? I wished I could store this in a bottle: what it’s like to sit across from him at a table, not quite speaking, but at least looking at each other. Being able to look at him - what a wonderful feeling. I felt wonderfully anxious to be with him. I felt like I could sense all the nerves in my body. 

Silence, again. I felt like we were both processing what to say, and trying to find the right words for it. I wanted to say: I need you. But I didn’t. I could go without him - but I wouldn’t call it a life. I wanted to say: I want to hold you. But holding was never the right word: holding him meant that I want to become him. But admitting to become him was too much. I couldn’t admit it to him. 

We were struggling. The people at the tables on either side of us were chatting away. What would they think of us? Speak now, Elio, I thought, this is what you came here for. You know it. Stop messing with the time - you have none! 

”How are you coping?” I tried again.

He flinched at the question. He took another sip of his wine. He looked like he had had too much to drink lately, too much alcohol, too little sleep. He had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, which looked good on him. 

I wanted to reach out and touch his hands so bad, but I couldn’t, which frustrated me to the bone. Instead I slowly let my shoe touch the top of his shoe, so at least we were connecting someway. I had to - how else would I be able to live with myself if I had not reached out, even if it was merely an inch? It felt more intimate than I had been with anyone in months.

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. 

”You’re making this so hard for me.” I’d heard that before. I loved making things hard on him. Figuratively and literally, I wanted to joke. But this wasn’t the time.

”I want to help,” I muttered under my breath. I did not want to catch our neighbours hearing what I was saying.

”That’s very kind, but you can’t.” He sighed and looked away, withdrew his shoe. ”When I saw her -” his voice broke. He let his chin fall down upon his chest for a few seconds. I had never seen him so entirely vulnerable. I had seen him naked, shared his body, gave my name to him, but had never seen him so worn down. The weight he was carrying on his shoulders must be so heavy! I could not fathom what he was going through. I wanted to hug him, comfort him. Anything. I felt my eyes tearing up at the sight of him.  

Making things harder for him, I reached out to touch his hand for a second. He let my hand rest on his for a fraction of time before pulling away. His hands were warm, sweaty. Two nervous men at a restaurant. He smiled uncomfortably.  
  
I knew we had to get out of the place.


	8. Chapter 8

_“I wait for you like a lonely house.”_  
 _\- Pablo Neruda, from “Sonnet XLV,” 100 Love Sonnets_  
  
We walked back to my hotel - ”It’s not a bother, I wouldn’t want you to get lost” - as though we were friends coming back from a night out. I bumped into his shoulder as we were walking. He knew I was doing it on purpose, but did not ask me to stop. So I did it again. 

My whole body was trembling with the thought of him, in my hotel room, naked? Would I see him naked again? How would it end? How could I say goodbye without kissing him? Would I live if I never got to kiss him again?   
  
We did not talk. There was no need to try anymore. To try and word any feeling at all, and to put a language to that feeling, seemed a waste. Language only served us up until a certain point - which we had reached. So we walked in silence. I was trying to walk as slow as possible in order to stretch the night just a little while longer - I was staring at our feet on the pavement and I felt my heart aching with every step. I was beyond terrified to leave him. I felt like an orphan who knew he would be left alone on a doorstep, and who would grow up someone else entirely. I was not ready to grow! I couldn’t see myself without him anymore. How to tell him I would die if he said goodbye - for I’d rather die than know I could never see him again. 

In the elevator in the hotel, after the doors had closed, his head fell on my shoulder and he suddenly started crying on my shirt. It shocked me tremendously - where did this come from? I hugged him while we went up, then, when we had reached the floor, we walked quickly to my room, with our heads down, and I opened the door hurriedly.

”I can’t,” he cried into my arms when we finally - finally! - were completely alone. He sunk to his knees, and cried into my chest. ”I know, I know,” I whispered, and felt tears streaming down my own face. Though I didn’t know - he couldn’t? He couldn’t do what? I was screaming internally for him to tell me what was going on.   
  
Oliver, I thought, welcome back to me.   
Please show me all of you again! I’m here to hold you.

Like the day before, I started kissing his eyes, his cheeks, which were salty from his tears. I kissed his neck, his adam’s apple, his collarbones through his shirt. It reminded me when I had broken down in his arms many years before - saying “I don’t want you to go”. I felt like I was transported back in time, but it was Oliver who was now crying into my chest, and I was the one who had to hold him, not the other way around.  
  
I took off his shoes for him carefully, and then his socks. I kissed both his feet, then his toes. 

”Lie down for a bit,” I offered. He made a sound, which I took as a yes. I helped him stand up to reach the bed. Quickly I closed the curtains, before returning to the bed again, to Oliver again. His arms immediately reached out to me. Elio, Elio, Elio, he cried. He seemed years younger now, so much more vulnerable. ”I’m just so tired,” he cried. 

”I understand, just lie down for a minute.” I took off my own shoes, socks, then quickly his clothes, then mine again. It seemed seconds before we were both in our naked bodies: nothing to hide now, better not do anything stupid now, I thought. Don’t you dare mess this up.   
  
We moved under the covers - he immediately hid his face with them, so I wouldn’t see him cry. I hugged him, but he urged my body to move on top of his, so I did, so my whole body was now on top of him. He sighed and hugged my chest tightly, so there was no chance for me to move away - he was still stronger than I was. How familiar it felt to lie on top on him, my entire body touching his. I could never do this with anyone, I thought, for this was my entire being, my entire weight on him. It was as though he wanted to feel all of me at the same time, so he couldn’t feel himself. I felt entirely and utterly relieved. I felt like we were connected now, and I did not want to move an inch - I wanted every inch of my body to be touching his. 

”I missed you so much. I died knowing you weren’t okay. I just had to come see you. I couldn’t stand it,” I admitted to his chest, as though I was admitting to a priest all of the feelings I had kept hidden for years, and which were now resurfacing, and I needed someone to hear them, so I did not have to lie any longer. I did not want to be a living lie any longer.   
  
I felt like I was myself again: Elio. This alone made me cry tears I didn’t think I had in me. 

”I can’t stand it. I can’t do it alone. I can’t keep up the lie. I look at them, and I see her. And I can’t look at them. I can’t bear to cry. I’m so happy you’re here. I missed you so much. Please hold me. Elio,” he pressed his lips to my neck, then my jawline, my cheeks, then I felt his lips on mine. Finally! Finally! His lips on mine, it felt like centuries since those lips were on mine.   
  
Slowly he moved his lips to cover my lips. Soft, gentle, but desperate. I wasn’t sure if this was fine - I didn’t want to take advantage of the situation. I would not mess him up any further - though of course, I was messing up his mind with every second that I held him. How could I stop myself? 

”Are you sure?” I asked, because I wasn’t. I was terrified to do anything he didn’t want to, but could feel my cock getting hard against both of our bodies. I was ashamed of myself - of my own hardness, of my own desires. I wanted him so much, I could hardly stand it. I was afraid I would come just from his touch alone. 

”I am so, so, so, so sure,” he muttered. With every ‘so’ he pressed another kiss to my lips. 

We could not stop ourselves from touching -  _I_  could not keep myself from touching. Wherever my nerves were, he was. We moved in a hurry. His cock was in my mouth in seconds, I licked every bit of him, then kissed him again, and again. I swallowed his pre-cum and gently pushed a finger into his ass. He moaned and pulled my hair. ”Don’t stop,” he moaned. One finger became two. I pushed my tongue into him to taste him, and pushed slowly in and out, while stroking his cock with my hand.

”Fuck me, Elio,” he cried out. How could I ever say no to him? Barely a minute later we both came, desperately. Both our cum on his chest in a messy act of love-making. Was it love-making? Sex, then. Pure sex. I felt like my entire body was on fire. I was breathing heavily, trying to contain myself, but noticed he was doing the same. How easily our bodies gave into the fuck! It reminded me of seeing a candle melt in a timespan of five seconds: we were melting under each other - were so full of lust neither of us could deal with anticipation. 

When I moved to lie down next to him to wrap my arms around him, I noticed he hadn’t stopped crying. His eyes were swollen and red, his face puffy. He looked like a teenager, younger even - a child. “Shit, I’m  _so_  sorry.” I stroke away the tears from his cheeks and chin.   
  
“Don’t be. Please. I wanted it,” he shushed me in reply. 

I wished to collide my face with his - to have his mouth, nose, eyes, ears, chin. I wanted to touch all of him at the same time, in order to not miss a second of his touch. To feel all his sadness in my body, to share the loss in two bodies, to carry the pain. I didn’t want him to cry, nor be ever sad again. I wished desperately to wash away the grief I saw in him, but I had no idea how, and if I was even the right person for it. 

Don’t go, I think I heard him say in my hair, our whole bodies intertwined. Don’t make me, I whispered.

We kissed again, more slowly this time. Our breathing calmed down while we were hugging each other. 

I said: ”I would die for you.”

”Don’t you ever do that to me!” he replied instantly, loudly. ”Take that back. You don’t mean it.” He looked furious. He grabbed me by my wrists forcefully, which hurt me. His eyes were piercing mine - he looked so angry, I instantly wished I had never said anything. But this was the truth, and I had to speak.   
  
Speak now, or forever hold your peace, the saying goes. There was no peace in me if I didn’t speak. I had to! 

”I want to,” I whispered.


	9. Chapter 9

_“I feel like a part of my soul has loved you since the beginning of everything._  
 _Maybe we’re from the same star.”_  
 _\- Emery Allen_  
  
Later, I was left alone in bed. He was scrambling for his clothes - which I had dropped all over the floor - and put them on. I felt like this was final. This was goodbye.   
  
I felt like the biggest slut in the world, but worse than that: I felt like a terrible human being for using him, for having sex with him while he was crying. I was not worthy of such a thing. Why had I valued my lust higher than his mourning? I was convinced I was a horrendous human being - felt like hitting my head against the headboard, felt like I needed to bruise, because I had used him. I had taken advantage of him while he was grieving the love of his live.   
  
The sheets were dirty, the air filled with the smell of sex and desperation. In my head I repeated: you are terrible, you are terrible. You do not deserve this man ever again.

My body was filled with angst, having finally spoken the truth, I could not keep myself from crying softly, my head under the sheets. Here he was, having just lost his wife two weeks before and some kid was proclaiming his love for him, saying he’d die for him, while he had two little boys in bed at home, where he was supposed to be, where he belonged.   
  
I had nobody to care for. Had not even cared for myself. I had the decency to show up in his life, shake up his feelings, and fuck him, and he had just lost his wife!

With the doorknob in hand, he sighed: “Elio. Don’t you ever say that to me again.”

Suddenly panicked, I found myself rushing to the door and threw myself in front of it, slamming away his hand from the handle, closing the door with a bang. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Please don’t hate me. I can’t help it.” I was crying loudly now, I was sure the neighbours and anyone in the hallway would hear me. I felt utterly disgusted with myself, what I’d done, for coming to New York. I was so selfish! So arrogant! I was nothing, absolutely nothing. I started to hit my own face hard, again and again and again, while I sunk to the door. I felt pain in my face, but it felt so good, that I could not stop doing it -

He looked startled by my outbreak and sunk down on his knees too, and firmly grabbed both my wrists, so I was unable to hit myself again.  _Cazzo_! What a mess I was! I was hysterically crying, my nose dripping with snot on my shirt now that my hands were tightly held by him. “Don’t leave me again. Not like this,” I cried. My voice was hoarse. I looked at him, and pleaded with my eyes.  

He hugged me while holding both my arms behind my back. I kissed him vigorously again, then again, then again. He let me, and kissed me back, though somewhat reluctant. I wished my tongue to stay in his mouth: let me never speak again. Let me lose my tongue, my mouth, my face - let me disappear now. I felt disastrously terrified of being by myself again. Alone. Five letters - one of the most horrendous words in the dictionary. I had been left alone too long, I didn’t want to be alone anymore.   
  
To be left alone with your own body, your own mind - enough to drive a person insane. For so long I had found alleyways around Oliver: other people, who were often more than enough, but never all I needed. I thought back to the alcohol, the hollowness, the anger, the hunger. Pressing my own face to the mirror, and being disgusted by my own eyes, for they looked so depleted with life, I wondered if I would ever find it back. Looking at my own body, and wanting to harm it, for it did nothing to please me, it did nothing to serve me, and I couldn’t identify with it.   
  
In his arms, I felt myself becoming utterly hollow again. Would I be able to take the emptiness? Was I willing to try? Oh, how I wanted for him to hold my hands behind my back forever, so I was not able to hurt myself ever again.   
  
If I can’t be good to myself, let someone at least make sure I can’t be bad to myself either.

He whispered softly into my hair: “You need to go to bed, Elio. Get some sleep. I’ll call tomorrow. Give me your number - I promise I’ll call.” His voice was so earnest, so sweet, so gentle.

“Swear it on my life.” I protested. I knew I had to let him go, back to his kids, who needed him more than I could ever need him. I had to stop being a selfish fool, had to stop crying.  _Just stop crying_ , Elio. Man up. Blink a few times, fake a smile. You learned this years ago.

“I swear on your life I’ll call,” he promised.   
  
Nothing left to argue about, now. The goodbye would come tomorrow when he’d call. Somehow it made me almost relieved: to know that tomorrow was another day, another chance for me to apologise, tell him we’d never have to speak about it, never mention it. Forget we were ever vulnerable in the first place.

I found the hotel’s notepad and wrote down the number of the room’s telephone. I made him double check the number. I made him swear one more time on my life that he’d call. He swore one more time on my life that he’d call.

“You make a wreck out of me,” he breathed, but he smiled, so he might not have meant it. Or he meant it, but he saw the irony.

He took me by the hand and urged me to lie down in bed again. While I was in bed, he bent over and kissed me deeply, and told me to go to sleep. I felt like his third son, and this was his nighttime routine. If only I could be his son, I thought, at least I would be able to see him every day, and love him as a father. If only I was allowed to love him - and for him to love me. And for no one to hate us for it.    
  
Tomorrow he’d call, and everything would be fine, we’d talk, he urged. He was so sweet to me, he should have left me on the floor, I thought. It would have served me right.

“Please don’t hate me,” I sniffed, “I have nothing but love for you.” It sounded terrible. It sounded like a terrible excuse.

I eyed him while he kissed me one last time on the mouth. Second attempt, I could hear him think. Second attempt to leave. “Go to sleep, Elio, you’re tired,” he lectured. He ruffled my hair and pressed his lips to my forehead.

“Get home safely,” I whispered. What could I have said?

I heard him taking a deep breath before walking out the door. I was still crying into the sheets, my face pressed in the mattress where his body had been, where his smell still was, which was the smell of sex, which I loved. I listened to his footsteps going to the elevator, the  _ping_  of its arrival, and then the elevator going down. He was gone. I was incredibly tired - my eyes felt heavy, my body numb.   
  
When the telephone rang a while later, my body awoke with a shock. When I realised it could be him, I picked it up immediately.

“Elio? Ci sei?” I heard a soft female voice, of a lover I had known in a world before this one.

I gasped. I hung up the phone as quickly as possible. I started to cry even louder.


	10. Chapter 10

_“i think my body  
is afraid  
of being a body again.  
it was nothing  
for the longest time.”  
\- Meggie Royer, from Missed Connection_  
  
He called at seven something the next morning, which had awoken me of a restless dream. I could barely hear him, he was talking so quietly. I could make out a boy crying in the background, and a female voice sussing the boy. Family, I thought. Must be his son with his mother.  
  
“Elio?” He greeted me, but I was too drunk on sleep to reply. I made a sound so he knew it was me on the other end. Something that said: I made it through the night. “Meet me in my office at three.” He sounded rushed, he must have been getting ready to go to work. “I hope you’re okay,” he said. Then the call ended before I could say anything.   
  
“I will”, I said to the lost connection, and then, sarcastically: “Thanks for asking,” but my voice sounded gruff and it came out as a whisper. As my mouth felt like a desert, I urged myself to get out of bed, and I moved to the bathroom to drink water from the leak. It tasted absolutely disgusting. What was wrong with New York?  
  
I threw myself back on the bed and fell asleep again in seconds.  
  
I woke up about two hours later feeling like there had been an earthquake during the night, and my body seemed too weak to move. For a while I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling contemplating life, feeling like I had never been so unattached to myself before.   
  
_He wants to see me again, he wants to see me again_ , I repeated in my head. It made me feel sick with anxiety, though yesterday’s wine could’ve been part of the problem why I felt sick, with a slight, yet familiar headache.

I let the previous night play out in my head while I lay in bed. The coffee at the hotel restaurant seemed like it was weeks ago. The cigarette, sitting down on the wall in the park, his fancy restaurant, the break down: first his, than mine. How vulnerable it was, to cry in front of another man, and confess the truth, which had been playing in your head for years, but never dared to come out. The longer it takes for the truth to come out, the more it has become a part of you. To try and accept a truth you never wanted in the first place.   
  
The slutty part of the night made me feel sick to my stomach, and at the same time, incredibly horny, which made me feel even more sick. Yet, I could not stop thinking about his naked body under mine, the soft palms of his hands, how rough his lips had been, how he had kissed me on my forehead and held me by my wrists. 

I masturbated quickly, to ease the sexual urge, thinking about him, and then took a shower to wash away the stickiness, sweat and my body which reeked of cigarettes. Just like that, I was Elio again, without any traces of Oliver on me. I felt hollowed out, stepping out of the shower and throwing on some fresh clothes. I felt strange - like the clothes no longer fit me, like they were no longer right for me. Perhaps it was the skin, or the organs, perhaps it was the inside of me that felt like it had been turned inside out, and was left in a trash can. When I thought of his name, it seemed to echo in me, as though there was nothing there.

My watch read noon, and as the bed was dirty, and the housekeepers would probably come soon, I decided to get out of the hotel for a bite to eat and some fresh air. Stepping outside, I barely noticed the terrible smell of the New York summer anymore - I was too occupied in my thoughts to be disgusted by it.   
  
Learning from my mistake with the pizza shop two days before, I sat down in what looked like a fancy cafeteria. Indeed, the sandwich I had tasted quite good and it made me feel a little better to have some food. To have something to do, I read the book I’d brought with me and which gave me an escape to not think about the time constantly, until it was three o’clock.

The book was called ‘By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept’ and was written by Paulo Coelho, the same writer who had written The Alchemist. It was about a woman who met up again with her childhood crush and falls for him again, after letting God back in her heart. The story disgusted me, and reminded me of myself, but still I forced myself to read on, for thinking back to the night before made me feel horrible in all kinds of way. I never wanted to feel like I had used him again - so I decided I would not reach out to him anymore - I couldn’t do it. Better hurt myself, than him.

When finally, finally, it was 2pm, I allowed myself to take a taxi to the university. It wasn’t too far, and I arrived half an hour early. I sat down in the yard of the university on a picnic table, and smoked three cigarettes back to back, feeling yet again, incredibly nervous to see Oliver. My mouth was dry, and I had barely said a word today.   
  
How does a person cope with saying goodbye? What does one say?

I wanted to tell him: please let me stay in New York for you. I’ll hold you every night that you want me. I’ll fuck you, let you fuck me, my body will be a free museum for you. I will be the version of myself you want me to be. Sweet, horny, arrogant, cocky, romantic - tell me which you like best and I’ll rule out the others. I could find myself a small apartment here, I was sure, I would live in a dump for you, Oliver. I won’t talk about your family or kids, you will never have to introduce me. As long as I would be real to you, I wouldn’t mind being invisible to anyone else.

And if he wouldn’t want that, well, maybe we could arrange something. A fuck once a year, or once in two years, would that fulfill his wishes? Would he mind? But then I thought: no, he would never. He has plenty of people he could sleep with, why would he want  _me_? 

And sicker yet, I thought: if he never wanted to see me again, and the goodbye was definite, the agreement signed, the door closed, what would I do? What was to become of me? 

I thought of a verse by Pablo Neruda:   
_“so I wait for you like a lonely house_  
_till you will see me again and live in me._  
 _Till then my windows ache.”_

I felt terribly connected to that verse - I felt like I  _was_  that verse. I wanted Oliver to live in me, however he wanted to, and with him in me, I wanted to live with myself.   
  
And if he didn’t want anything to do with me anymore - I would be waiting for him like a lonely house. I’d buy the curtains, get some flooring in, buy the bed. Light the candles, stack the bookshelves. I’d wait for him to return to me again. 

Ten minutes to two, I walked into the building and remembered the way up to his office on the fourth floor as though I had walked those exact steps countless of times. How different from just two days ago, when I had been panicking about seeing him, and my lips had been bleeding from nervously biting on them! Now I was preparing for the worst: the final goodbye: thank you for coming, it was good to see you, but please leave, and never return.

I felt like I was walking into a funeral, except everyone around me was not paying any attention to the coffin. I envisioned every possibility of us, and the only logical conclusion I could come to, which was probably the best for both of us, was that I would have to accept that this was a one-time occurrence, and go home to Rome, and find it in myself to finally move on with my life. I probably had to move away from the city, maybe to the outskirts of town or a distant village, where he hadn’t been, a town in which we hadn’t made love, in which my body had never been his. I would get myself a dog. Yes. Dogs were good company, too.   
  
Yes, I decided, I should move someplace new. I could make friends elsewhere. A couple of friends had already moved out of Rome after graduation - I could do the same, find a job to keep me occupied, get a stable income for once, not live in an apartment from old family friends who had moved away, and which they let me stay in for cheap. Rent something myself, buy the furniture, pay for the electrics and gas and water and cable tv. 

And a job, yes. Find a sweet girl to marry, just as Oliver had done himself. Check up on her, make sure she had a good life, get her pregnant.   
  
I could do it. I could force myself to do it. 

But it made me feel incredibly nauseous. I had never had to think ahead - life had always seemed to move along just nicely without any real future plans. I had taken the easy route: studied the most obvious thing, moved to Rome, which most childhood friends did, and had not faced the most troubling, most exciting part of me, until now: which was the Elio I was when I was loved and desired by the person I wanted to be loved and desired by.   
  
How easy it was to live as your own shadow: hide in the dark while your body does the work. Look through the eyes, feel with the same hands, but as though I was standing behind it - never really experiencing anything. 

After knocking, and hearing him say “come in!”, I stepped inside his office. It was darker than I had remembered it. Why were the blinds closed?

“Hi,” I said nervously as I stepped in. “Hi,” he greeted, sitting behind his desk. The pile on his desk had gone away: instead he had been reading through some papers. The ashtray had been emptied - there were no stumps in there. His face looked serious. I felt like I was about to get lectured on my behaviour from the previous night, and then, expelled from his life. He should, I thought. I was preparing for the worst - pressed my nails in the back of my hand.  
  
I sucked on the tiny scar on my lip.


	11. Chapter 11

_"I would have eaten your heart."_  
_\- Lisel Mueller, from The Biographer_  
  
He looked stern. ”Elio, you have to understand that this was foolish of us. We let ourselves go and we shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have gone along with it.”

Cazzo, I was getting lectured, I thought. I did not want to look at him, so I pretended to study the books on the other side of the small study. The place really was tiny. I felt my nerves in my fingers, and clenched my hands in fists, as if I was trying to control the blood flow. I was urging myself to control myself. Get yourself together, Elio. This is important.

“I have kids, Elio. I just lost my wife! I felt like I was cheating on her…” his thoughts trailed off. Why had he stopped? Had he cheated on her before, I wondered? I stole a quick glance in his direction, but I didn’t meet his eye. Had he been with another man?

“Have you been with another man?” I asked surprised, eyeing him to scan his reaction. I knew I was avoiding us talking about sex, for it became all the more real if we talked about it. If we had to pretend to forget it, better not speak about it, I thought. Better to be honest now, lay out our cards on the table, so there would be no questions left if we said goodbye.

He seemed taken aback by this question. “I have,” he admitted, his voice low. It sounded as though he regretted it terribly. 

_Cavalo_! Holy crap! “What?! You have?” I eyed him to scan his reaction.

“Like you haven’t!” he shot back, glancing through the window in his office to look at students passing by, to avoid looking me in the eye. He sounded like himself again, not like a professor. I loved that he knew, even though we hadn’t spoken about it.

I stammered: “Well, yes, but -”

“Don’t be superficial, Elio. I couldn’t control myself, neither could you. Let’s not hold it over ourselves.”

Here I was thinking that he had been disgusted by me, by the intimacy of two males in the dark! I had not been able to fight the urges, but I always thought of him as stronger, more capable of controlling them. He wasn’t holding it over me? He was not mad at me for taking advantage of him while he was vulnerable? 

“Why did you marry her?” I pressed, pointing to the picture on his desk of his wife and him. I knew I was being rude, but I wanted to know, now, I had been too curious for too long.

“It’s what’s expected, you know that. I did not want to deal with the talk. I was 24, younger than you are. I didn’t have a clue. My family pressured me to marry her. We made an agreement -” He trailed off again.

This information came as a surprise to me. An agreement? His wife had known?! These phone calls when I had thought he was happily married, he had been seeing other men and she had known? Why did he go through with a marriage if he couldn’t be faithful? It felt so unlike him to be unfaithful. I had so many questions, and little patience: I wanted answers to all of them.

“You preferred them to me,” I declared. This was why he had never come back. I was too young, did not know what to do with myself. I wasn’t good in bed.

He scraped his head, then shook his head. “No, Elio.”

It shocked me. “Then why?” I was full on staring at him now, my whole body tense. I was pacing to try to lighten my body of the stress this conversation was causing it.

“I could not interfere with your life - you were doing so well in university, you were seeing people, you were enjoying yourself, you always sounded so collected when I called - you never gave me a sign. I didn’t want to mess you up.”

Had he ever been this honest to me? I felt like I was looking at him for the first time again, and I could truly see him now, the way he was those years ago. We had both created a facade, which was now collapsing in front of our eyes. With every truth, Oliver was admitting to something, and he must have known too, that we had both been going through years of processing what had happened all those summers ago. What we had desired, what it had meant to us, how it had changed us, how it had shaped our wants and needs for the future. With every truth, he was coming back to me, and he was starting to resemble the Oliver I had called myself in secret for years. 

“I still walk the streets in Rome where we walked. I once booked the room at the hotel we stayed in, for two days, to masturbate on the bed furiously,” I heard myself admitting. “Every summer I go back to the house and masturbate, with your shirt on my face.” And then as an afterthought: “I’ve fucked more peaches, thinking about you eating my sperm-filled peach. It turns me on so much.”

We both laughed, reminiscing the day when he had eaten the peach, and he had said ‘I wanted you from day one,’ and ‘Whatever happens between us, Elio, I just want you to know. Don’t ever say you didn’t know.’  
  
The mood had cleared somehow. I sat down on the windowsill and smiled looking at him. He smiled back. I suddenly felt like I have won a million lire, or played piano for a sheering crowd. I felt like I had jumped off a cliff, running, and dived straight into the water, and came out a new man. And this new man was greeting life with arms wide open. 

I felt like he was admitting to me, what I had been scared of for years: that it had been nothing to him. That he wasn’t thinking about me anymore. I felt a joy in me, a fire starting, and he had been the one to light it. He had admitted that I was better than the lovers he had been with. Me! I felt like crying, and sure enough, felt my eyes getting teary eyed. This what I had longed to hear for years. This was like coming home.

“Look. Come over for dinner tonight, now, and meet the boys. Please, please, please,” he said. “You’ll love them. My parents have gone back to New England.”

“I will,” I promised. And I looked over towards the picture of the boys, who looked like the sweetest little creatures in the entire world, and I felt incredibly excited to get to meet them.

Oliver walked up to me, and kissed me softly on the lips, smiling brightly. I kissed him back, then hugged him tightly. I was full on crying now, lips shaking, I was so relieved. He kissed away the tears on my cheek, and from my eyes, just as I had done for him two days before. It was the sweetest gesture, a gesture of love.

“What’s going to happen?” I wondered, looking at him.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, but he was smiling. “Let’s start with today.”


	12. Chapter 12

_“… Wonderful,  
        the summer was long, was forever, and is  
over and we go to bed early so   
the nights are long, old-fashioned long and sweet,  
hotter than the hottest summer day._  
 _The windows will close, and music will play in my house  
and you are here. You are now forever here.”  
\- Hannie Rouweler   
_  
 _“… Heerlijk,  
       de zomer duurde lang, was eeuwig, en is  
voorbij en wij gaan vroeg naar bed zodat  
       nachten weer lang, ouderwets lang duren en zoet  
warmer dan de heetste zomerdag.   
De ramen gaan dicht en muziek klinkt in mijn huis  
       en jij bent er. Jij bent er nu altijd.”  
_ _\- Hannie Rouweler_  
  
July, 1998

Whenever we think back on the first time I came to New York to visit him, we tell it as though it’s the most romantic story in the world. We never tell anyone about the fastest fuck in history, or that we both ended up crying. And that it was rocky in the beginning, adjusting to each other, accepting our sexuality, while I was trying to find work so I could have a work visa - it wasn’t easy. We were both still struggling to accept ourselves: for a while, we wouldn’t kiss in public, or hold hands, for we were both too shy and embarrassed by it. And Oliver’s parents are still angry at us, and have never met me, which upsets Oliver greatly. His parents have not seen their grandchildren anymore.   
  
So we tell the story as though we were two lovers reconnecting - and we leave the bad parts out. He tells the story a lot better than I do, anyways. In it, he mimics my Italian accent in such a humorous way, that it always makes everyone laugh. And I love it when he tells it, because my entire being is filled with love towards him, the way he speaks of me - he talks about me as though I am the center of his being.    
  
I spend every hour of the day looking for his eye to dart to mine, and to have him smile across the room to me. And to  _know_. To never question anything, for we are the same open book. When he touches me, a flower blooms somewhere in his name. 

It took a good few months before we told the closest people to us that we were in a relationship. Many of our acquaintances or colleagues still don’t know. But that’s alright. And some people don’t agree - but we’ve learned to live with it. Just as I have learned to live with the salty, greasy food, and have gained a few pounds, and learned to live with the fact that you have to really look up to see the stars in New York City, and that sometimes, at the right time, you can see the sun setting through the building. 

To be with him, and to love him, and to be able to be by his side every single day, is the best feeling in the world, and constantly makes me feel like this is the happiest I could be, just to realise the next day that with every passing day, I could be happier still. The only thing I hate about working is that I have to miss Oliver for 10 hours of the day - other than that, it’s a better job than I could have ever asked for. 

We bicker, of course - about the boys’ bedtimes and little, insignificant things - and sometimes I get so homesick to Italy that I feel down for weeks on end. But most of the time, I feel like thanking the universe for bringing him to me. For he is my sun, and feeling him near me, brings me so much happiness that I feel like I could end wars with the love I feel for him. 

And the best thing is that not only can I call him by my own name again, and think of myself in his name, there are also two amazingly perfect small human beings who are just as much Oliver is Oliver, or as much as I am Oliver. And to get to know his boys and their personalities, is to get to know Oliver better every single day. And I am so entirely lucky to get to know them, and love them as my own. 

Every summer, we go back to my parents’ house for as long as our jobs allow us to, and my old bedroom, which was once his bedroom, is now forever ours, while the boys sleep in my old room across the balcony. We have to be quiet in the afternoon and in the evening when we make love, because we never want to wake them up.   
  
And I love everything: from the smell of rosemary on the hot summer days to the frantic rattle of cicadas in the afternoon, to his foot on my foot under the table - even when we’re already holding hands.   
  
It’s everything. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading it just as much as I did writing it. If you want to show your love for this story, I’d appreciate it if you would buy me a coffee at: http://ko-fi.com/carline or send me a message on Tumblr (www.timotheetea.tumblr.com). I’d love to know what you thought about it. 
> 
> Thanks for reading. <3


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